For the seventh year, Babbel has released its annual list of mispronounced words on television. Babbel, a subscription-based language learning platform, partnered with the Institute Of Verbatim Reporters and The Captioning Group to compile data and mispronounced words.
Among those words was British singer Adele’s name.
Though many of her fans, particularly in the US, pronounce “Adele” like “Uh-dell,” this actually isn’t how her name is properly pronounced. During a recent fan event for the premiere of her “I Drink Wine” video, Adele responded to a fan who pronounced her name correctly. The correct way to say her name is “Uh-dale,” as it sounds with an East London accent. When the fan pronounced her name this way, Adele responded, “Love that. She said my name perfectly!”
Though Adele was the only musician whose name showed up on this year’s list, there are several artists whose names we may not be pronouncing correctly. In a Beats 1 Radio interview in 2018, Ariana Grande revealed her last name is actually pronounced “Gran-dee” and not “Gran-deh.”
Last December, Kid Cudi, who released his 10th studio album, Entergalactic this September, cleared up the pronunciation of his legal name. Cudi, whose real name is Scott Mescudi, said on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon that the emphasis goes on the first syllable of his last name “We’re going to do this right now. I really want everybody to learn how to pronounce my last name. This has been bothering me for 13 years. I know I kind of confuse everybody with my rap name. It’s ‘MESS-cud-e.'”
